Four Dream Poems
Causal Apparel
A pair of faded
green slacks with a
Dark streak down
the side of one leg,
in the pockets, pencils,
many keys, and buttons
Useful in getting things started.
Hospital Information
Her voice clears the curving desk
That hides her seated figure
only her white hair shows
“I don’t know if you knew John . . .,
But he died yesterday.”
A perky twang, she must
have been a cheerleader
in days gone by
The approaching man bent
with years replies,
“Yeh, I knew him, a good man
as far as it goes.”
The world we know keeps
shrinking as it grows.
Cadaver of Words
This poem came to me
as I dreamed in bed
I remembered the words as I woke
and said them in my head:
Bastard of an incubus
Left me to eat stone
Leaving me in mid-thrust
On this path, alone
then I rose and wrote it down
and now the poem is dead.
Llama the Mule Restrained and Observed
A dark tawny mule
(The children call it “llama”)
Makes a racket, stomping
around on a spotlit stage, braying.
Randomly Kicking with both hind legs.
Now strapped down
on a gurney, the mule quietly
pants, legs vertical, still kicking.
The children take notes
as its eyes roll back in panic.
One Poem about Reading a Poem
Mis-Read
(Lui et Elle by D. H. Lawrence)
When he told me about the tortoise couple,
Reptilian and beaked,
I somehow missed the shells
And added unmentioned feathers,
picturing a great white hen
and a small rooster instead.
My stubborn mind held the
illusory layer of chickens
disguising the reptilian pair
til’ almost the end
when the shells could not be
Denied, paging back
To see where the white hen
Came striding in
“Reared on uncanny legs”
And her eye on the food,
catching his finger
in the toothless wedge
And those bright pitiless eyes
Unseeing him
In favor of bread.
But then a tortoise
Is much like a flightless
bird with wings folded
carrying a bone origami
House, folded in
Featherless patterns etched
on the painted roof.
Myriad Ways 